I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.
Edit I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying "Just buy a plex pass" are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
To be crystal clear to anyone getting this email: if the server admin has a Plex Pass, users need to do nothing to continue as normal. The streaming pass is only for users who aren’t connecting to a server that has a Plex Pass.
What I find shitty about this is that it’s being indiscriminately sent to every Plex account. There’s bound to be lots of people who don’t understand what this means who will be tricked into buying a streaming pass they don’t need at all. I’ve been getting messages from my users all day asking wtf is going on, and I’m getting tired of trying to convince them to just ignore the email.
That's where my head was. If anything, it threw all of my users into a panic, thinking that they had to suddenly start paying. I had a couple immediately uninstall the apps. I don't blame them, the way it was worded it was pretty much pushing them that they had to. Plex undid years worth of trust right there with them.
What gets me is that they didn't message plex pass holders about this first. I would have gladly let my users know that they need to do nothing. Instead I'm fielding all kinds of panicked messages.
Same. Their wording was obviously meant to push them into just buying the membership. They chose language that sounded like you have to buy it ~or talk to your server admin~.
It should have been "Talk with your server owner, <> to see if you need to purchase a subscription or not". Language like that would be very clear - but they chose not to do that.
Or even better. <>, which is ran by <> already has a plex pass subscription, you can continue watching without a subscription! Gee, how nice that would have been.
WAIT
WHAT?
I was reading your comment and the just came in the inbox. Lol I don't even use plex at this point.
I asked around a bit, but so far none of my users have recieved an email. Other people with their own server (and a plex pass) also haven't gotten any complains. But I pretty much only have two types of users, own server + plex pass or no pass but almost certainly only connected to my server (mostly family).
It seems the e-mails were quite selectivly send out only to people that were actually affected by the change.
I guess if they know that the user only connects to one server that has a plex pass then they can filter down the email, the thing that keeps me from trying to move to jellyfin yet is that most of my users use multiple servers as a lot of my friends host plex so we cross share to get more coverage
Who do you think it should be sent to? Only server owners?
Given Plex’s users, I think it’s appropriate to notify everyone with a Plex account for changes like that. No issue there.
What I take issue with is that email. It’s at best lazy and at worst manipulative. It’s worded like “if you stream media you need to buy this new pass”. Ok, clear. This free app I use now costs money.
But then they slap on “alternatively, if you connect to a server with a Plex Pass don’t worry about it”. But that’s not something the majority of consume-only users are going to understand. I have about 15 regular users and the only one who knew what that meant was the one who runs their own Plex server.